Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lane, and I'm Joe McCormick. Robert.
Speaker 1: What's the weirdest thing you ever got stuck up your nose? Oh?
Speaker 1: I think I've been very fortunate. I know plenty of
Speaker 1: other people who have tales of siblings getting odd objects
Speaker 1: lodged up their nostrils, being a marble, or I think
Speaker 1: my brother in law had a piece of carpet stuck
Speaker 1: up there something. You know, you hear all these stories,
Speaker 1: and luckily, I don't think I've ever had anything, um,
Speaker 1: anything stuck in my nose. So unfortunate in that regard.
Speaker 1: You know, your mention of the marbles makes me think
Speaker 1: about did you ever see that old episode of the
Speaker 1: show Home Movies where their take on the like judas
Speaker 1: pre supplemental messages thing is. There's a rock band who
Speaker 1: I think does a does a public service announcement song
Speaker 1: called don't put Marbles in your nose, but it also
Speaker 1: keeps put them in there. Now, I think that the worst,
Speaker 1: especially like childhood experience of anything going into an unexpected
Speaker 1: orifice would be um when I had some sort of
Speaker 1: small insect fly into my ear. Oh really, yeah, which
Speaker 1: which the main distressing thing is that a little bug
Speaker 1: once it gets inside your ear is it's extremely loud.
Speaker 1: So I do. I do remember that quite clearly. It's
Speaker 1: looking at the outside from the inside, it's a horrible feeling. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I remember like my dad was there and he
Speaker 1: jumped in and I guess it happened at the house
Speaker 1: because they had some like rubbing alcohol and like they
Speaker 1: poured a little bit of that into my ear and
Speaker 1: that took care of it. Well, that experience is going
Speaker 1: to be a great jumping off point for our discussion today,
Speaker 1: because I think we should start off by playing one
Speaker 1: of my favorite games that we play on this show,
Speaker 1: which is go into old medical journals and read some weirdness.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, So I want to talk about a case
Speaker 1: report that was published in December of eighteen thirty in
Speaker 1: the medical journal The Lancet. This is a truly disturbing report.
Speaker 1: So if you if you get picked out easily, you
Speaker 1: know fair warning. So let us read from the Lancet.
Speaker 1: A farmer's wife, twenty eight years of age, residing in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood of mets had for a long time been
Speaker 1: affected with an unpleasant itching sensation in the nose with corrisa,
Speaker 1: which means running nose, to which symptoms. In the year
Speaker 1: eighteen seven, violent headache exceeded so that she was at
Speaker 1: length obliged to apply for medical aid. The headache was
Speaker 1: irregularly intermittent, and generally began at the root of the nose,
Speaker 1: in the middle of the forehead, or at the right
Speaker 1: frontal region, extending thence first to the right side and
Speaker 1: then over the whole head. The attack was accompanied by
Speaker 1: a great discharge of tears, and sometimes even nausea and vomiting.
Speaker 1: The features were forcibly distorted, the jaws firmly closed, and
Speaker 1: the eyes and ears so very sensible that she could
Speaker 1: not bear the least light or any noise. At other
Speaker 1: times became delirious, pressed the head between her hands, and
Speaker 1: ran about in a state of distraction. The pain was,
Speaker 1: according to her statement, like the strokes of a hammer,
Speaker 1: or as if something was perforating the skull, and the
Speaker 1: fits generally returned about twelve times in twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the headache continued uninterruptedly for several days. The corsa,
Speaker 1: or running nose again existed during the whole period, and
Speaker 1: the discharge was occasionally very feted and mixed with blood. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we're starting off pretty gross already. This poor woman
Speaker 1: is suffering these terrible chronic symptoms. She's got the headache,
Speaker 1: she's got the swelling, she's got the sensitivity and the
Speaker 1: eyes and the nose and all that. Uh, and then
Speaker 1: she's also got this discharge mixed with blood. It's always
Speaker 1: distressing in any case to have fetid discharge. The idea
Speaker 1: that it's fetted is very worrisome. Okay, So continuing, some
Speaker 1: medicines were employed, but no regular plan of treatment was followed,
Speaker 1: and it was not before a twelve month suffering that
Speaker 1: this singular affection terminated after the expulsion of a worm
Speaker 1: from the nose, which moved with rapidity and when placed
Speaker 1: in water, remained alive for several days. It was afterwards
Speaker 1: killed by being put in alcohol and then sent to
Speaker 1: Monsieur Mareschal, who reported the case to the society. He
Speaker 1: found the animal to be more than two inches in
Speaker 1: length and one line in breadth, and I looked that up.
Speaker 1: Apparently a line is a unit of measure. That was
Speaker 1: not very well standardized. It probably means like a tenth
Speaker 1: of an inch or twelfth of an inch, so not
Speaker 1: not very wide, um, but two inches in length. It
Speaker 1: had too antenna, was so not not a proper worm, right,
Speaker 1: not a proper worm. Was of yellowish color, flat, and
Speaker 1: consisted of sixty four rings on each of which were
Speaker 1: two legs. So definitely not a worm. Uh. Mr Marshal's
Speaker 1: subsequently transmitted the insect to Messieurs Holandra and Roussel, who
Speaker 1: ascertained that it was a skulla pendra electrica. Okay, so
Speaker 1: if had two legs per segment. Yeah, that sounds an
Speaker 1: awful lot like a centipede. Right, you are, Robert, this
Speaker 1: is a centipede we're talking about. This report alleges that
Speaker 1: this woman had this chronic condition for more than a year,
Speaker 1: which was alleviated when she finally blew a centipede out
Speaker 1: of her nose. Still, that's got to be pretty satisfied. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Talked about what is the is there a word for that?
Speaker 1: The psychological thing where like people are obsessed with, like
Speaker 1: a removing objects from their body, the satisfaction people get
Speaker 1: from like picking a huge booger, or from from pooping
Speaker 1: a large poop I don't know, but or popping a
Speaker 1: pimple too. Yes, I thought about this on and off
Speaker 1: for years, and I would love to explore it in
Speaker 1: an episode if there is enough material out there about it,
Speaker 1: because clearly it is an obsession, like their whole video
Speaker 1: channels on YouTube associated with with this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And um yeah, And when I hear people talk about
Speaker 1: imagine the virtual realms willn't happen in the future, and
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, well, yes, you're gonna have your obvious sex
Speaker 1: and violence oriented uh experiences, but they're gonna be like
Speaker 1: whole virtual realms, just just devoted to the popping of
Speaker 1: of surrealistic pimples. Yeah, what is the grand theft auto
Speaker 1: of like visceral body perching experiences? Yeah? Before I forget,
Speaker 1: I do want to give a hat tip because I
Speaker 1: came across this story on the blog of a British
Speaker 1: writer named Thomas Morris, who covers a lot of horrifying
Speaker 1: medical history and is definitely worth following if you're interested
Speaker 1: in this kind of stuff, So shout out to Morris,
Speaker 1: who we will return to again in a minute. But anyway,
Speaker 1: back to the centipede coming out of the nose. So
Speaker 1: there are probably some good reasons to question the details
Speaker 1: of this report. Right, just because it was published in
Speaker 1: a medical journal like the Lance, it doesn't mean it's
Speaker 1: necessarily true, especially this far back in history. But we
Speaker 1: can we can come back to that. So the the
Speaker 1: insect alleged here, it's not actually an insect. It is
Speaker 1: a centipede. It's the skull of Pendra electrica, reportedly bioluminescence centipede,
Speaker 1: according to a catalog by Bozard in Nature in eight
Speaker 1: quote a well known luminous insect. Again not an insect,
Speaker 1: but well known luminous insect whose light is but rarely
Speaker 1: seen owing to the insect living underground and in manure heaps. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's how it would have seen what it was
Speaker 1: doing up in her sinuses maybe, or that's maybe that's
Speaker 1: how it ended up there, like she was snorting manure.
Speaker 1: There you go. But the bottom line is this, this
Speaker 1: report is that a woman had a glowing centipede living
Speaker 1: in her nose for over a year, which is a
Speaker 1: bit far fetched. Yeah, I think so, but I mean,
Speaker 1: it's impossible to know for sure, but I'm I have
Speaker 1: a lot of doubts. But Yeah, so I wanted to
Speaker 1: explore more and then later we'll get into the more
Speaker 1: general territory. I think of Creepy Crawley's getting into body orifices,
Speaker 1: and I think we're going to be focusing primarily not
Speaker 1: on things that are saying obligate parasites, because that's a
Speaker 1: more trodden ground. Right, you might understand why, like say
Speaker 1: leech could get into the human anus because it's seeking
Speaker 1: that kind of environment, right, or or certainly indo parasites
Speaker 1: that even if they're not Certainly there are plenty of
Speaker 1: human endo parasites, but they're also are indo parasites of
Speaker 1: other species that can end up in our bodies. And
Speaker 1: even though they are not at home here, um, this
Speaker 1: home is very much like the home they desire. Right,
Speaker 1: So we're not so much talking about like hookworms, tape worms,
Speaker 1: human bot flies and all that, which we have discussed
Speaker 1: in other episodes, but we're talking more today about creatures
Speaker 1: that don't need to be in the human body and
Speaker 1: wouldn't normally seek it out, but somehow they at least
Speaker 1: reportedly end up there. So coming back to the skull
Speaker 1: Apendra centipedes of the genus skullopendra can be truly awesome predators.
Speaker 1: They tend to step over what is for me one
Speaker 1: of the most shocking and unpleasant of lines, which is
Speaker 1: when invertebrates prey on vertebrates. That's something something about that
Speaker 1: always feels backwards and scary and not okay, I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean part of it perhaps is that. And I
Speaker 1: feel like this is a kind of an undercurrent to
Speaker 1: to this earlier example is that invertebrates. Invertebrates will undoubtedly
Speaker 1: feast upon vertebrates. You know they are there, They're going
Speaker 1: to be some of the primary devours of our of
Speaker 1: our deceased form, and and certainly older generations that were
Speaker 1: more associated and more closely aligned with physical death, they
Speaker 1: would have witnessed this more often, both in the bodies
Speaker 1: of animals but also in the in in human bodies
Speaker 1: from time to time. But I'm talking about predation. You're
Speaker 1: talking about you outright killing, which seems like theyre It's
Speaker 1: it's like this is they have crossed the line, like
Speaker 1: the line being you shall eat us when we are dead,
Speaker 1: but now shall not do the killing right. It's supposed
Speaker 1: to be like humans eating lobster is not lobster cousins
Speaker 1: eating human cousins. I mean, that is clearly verboting, but
Speaker 1: it's just not it's just not verboting. It happens in
Speaker 1: nature and there are examples of skull pender that do this. So,
Speaker 1: according to a two thousand five article in the Caribbean
Speaker 1: Journal of Science by Mulinary at All quote, Scullopendrid centipedes
Speaker 1: prey on frogs and toads up to ninety five millimeters long,
Speaker 1: small lizards, snakes up to two hundred and forty seven
Speaker 1: millimeters long, birds up to the size of a sparrow,
Speaker 1: and both field and house mice. So you've got some
Speaker 1: centipedes in this genus that are getting down on birds,
Speaker 1: they're getting down on mice, but presumably due to size restrictions.
Speaker 1: I think if there are actually any cases of Sculla
Speaker 1: Pendrid's getting in people's noses, it's it's going to be
Speaker 1: not the ones that twists their many legged bodies around
Speaker 1: mice and sparrows and eat their warm blooded mammal flesh.
Speaker 1: Right that those would have probably be too big to
Speaker 1: end up in the nasal cavity. Now back to Thomas Morris,
Speaker 1: the medical history writer who brought this case to my attention.
Speaker 1: On his blog. He writes in his blog post that
Speaker 1: he thinks it's unlikely that the centipede would have survived
Speaker 1: inside the woman's nasal sinuses for his long the report alleges,
Speaker 1: which is more than a year. And I think that's
Speaker 1: I don't know, It's one of those things where it's
Speaker 1: hard to know for sure, But that does seem like
Speaker 1: a likely objection to throw right right. It's like, what
Speaker 1: would it be eating in there? Uh, could it really
Speaker 1: like survive in there that long without getting blown out
Speaker 1: or killed in some other way? Yeah, it just doesn't
Speaker 1: seem sustainable. On the other hand, the report is detailed,
Speaker 1: it's published in a reasonably reliable source, it does seem
Speaker 1: to be reported by a physician. It just seems sort
Speaker 1: of inherently unlikely. Then again, you know, there are all
Speaker 1: kinds of things we go to. We can talk in
Speaker 1: a minute about the possibility of hoaxes of confusion. I mean,
Speaker 1: what if just like a centipede happened to get up
Speaker 1: in her nose during the last day or so of
Speaker 1: an otherwise bad nose inflammation period. That also seems unlikely.
Speaker 1: But so um, this is not the only reported case
Speaker 1: of a centipede up the nose. In fact, I came
Speaker 1: across a totally separate case from an old medical archive,
Speaker 1: also dug up by Thomas Morris on his blog. This
Speaker 1: was years ago. Uh, this is from the first volume
Speaker 1: of Medical Essays and Observations, published in seventeen sixty four.
Speaker 1: So here's this case quote. A woman of good heel constitution,
Speaker 1: meaning she was healthy about thirty six years old, began
Speaker 1: to complain of a fixed pain in the lower and
Speaker 1: right side of her forehead. During the last two years,
Speaker 1: this pain became continual, accompanied with convulsions, often depriving her
Speaker 1: of both her reason and rest. She was two or
Speaker 1: three times brought to death's door by it. At the
Speaker 1: end of four years, after trying several medicines to no purpose,
Speaker 1: and despairing of any relief, and yet not knowing what
Speaker 1: to do, she took to taking repeat snuff so it's
Speaker 1: like tobacco snuff. She had not taken the snuff for
Speaker 1: a month when behold seized one morning with a fit
Speaker 1: of sneezing and blowing her nose. After to her great surprise,
Speaker 1: she found a worm rolled up in a little blood.
Speaker 1: This worm, when stretched to its full length was six
Speaker 1: inches long and but two When it contracted itself, it
Speaker 1: was two lines broad and one and a half thick,
Speaker 1: of a coffee color, convex on one side and flat
Speaker 1: on the other. It was of the centipede kind and
Speaker 1: had fifty six feet on each side. It had two eyes,
Speaker 1: and both its head and tail were armed with two forks.
Speaker 1: It lived eighteen hours in an empty bottle, and three
Speaker 1: or four hours after brandy had been put to it.
Speaker 1: The egg that produced this worm, in all probability, was
Speaker 1: sucked in along with the air she breathed, and carried
Speaker 1: after to the frontal sinus, where it met with a
Speaker 1: proper need us, meaning nest, to give it both growth
Speaker 1: and increase. All right, Well, at least we have a
Speaker 1: on a hypothesis here of how it could have wound
Speaker 1: up there, right, Maybe, I mean that seem well, she
Speaker 1: sucked in the eggs somehow and it hatched in there.
Speaker 1: That also, I don't know. I'm not a centipede expert.
Speaker 1: That seems a little bit unlikely, but it sounded like
Speaker 1: the The implication here was that it might the egg
Speaker 1: might have been in the snuff. At any rate, there's
Speaker 1: there's at least a there's a there's an attempt at
Speaker 1: explaining how it wound up in there. It's not like,
Speaker 1: oh God has has put a centipede in thy head.
Speaker 1: It is clearly a spontaneous generation of centipedes. Right, clearly
Speaker 1: we have we have a theory about it. We have
Speaker 1: an hypothesis about how it could have ended up in there,
Speaker 1: and then the story of how it ended up coming out.
Speaker 1: It's about to get weirder. Guess what the reporting physician
Speaker 1: recommends as a treatment for centipede sinus blowing, blowing one's nose. Nope.
Speaker 1: Monsieur Letra, who related the story, advises in all such
Speaker 1: stubborn cases as will not submit to either external or
Speaker 1: internal means, to come to the trapan which may be
Speaker 1: employed with all safety. That's right, trepanning if the insect
Speaker 1: won't come out. Now, we've talked about trepanning on the
Speaker 1: podcast before. What what's going on here? You bring out
Speaker 1: the drill, that's right, we're talking. Usually usually the idea
Speaker 1: would be we're going to drill a hole in the
Speaker 1: skull to relieve pressure into uh and and therefore a
Speaker 1: relieve you of your symptoms. But I guess this is
Speaker 1: the idea of like, Okay, it needs that centipede needs
Speaker 1: out of your head. It's not coming out through the
Speaker 1: naturally occurring gateways. We shall make a new gateway in
Speaker 1: the head for the centipede. Right, I mean this is
Speaker 1: almost like the centipede is kind of taking the role
Speaker 1: of the stone of madness in the medieval form here. Uh.
Speaker 1: Though again I want to allow I feel this is unlikely.
Speaker 1: It's not impossible lady had a centipede in your sinus. Uh.
Speaker 1: He also recommends using oil and acrid plants to force
Speaker 1: it out. That maybe seems more reasonable. That would be like,
Speaker 1: let's try that first. Yes, let's let's check those off
Speaker 1: the list first. Okay, that's not all. I feel like,
Speaker 1: who's the Who's the game show host who says that's
Speaker 1: not all. You're gonna get more prizes? I don't know.
Speaker 1: The cat in the hat says that, okay, I might
Speaker 1: a game show host, the cat in the hat, I
Speaker 1: will be the cat in the hat and said, that's
Speaker 1: not the last of the centipedes up the noses, but
Speaker 1: we got more for you, including with more tobacco associate ship.
Speaker 1: So with the snuff third case documented right, alongside the
Speaker 1: first one in this In this source from the eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: Monsieur Malow reported that one of the king's household troops
Speaker 1: complained for three years of an acute pain in the
Speaker 1: left frontal sinus, which extended to the eye of the
Speaker 1: same side, so as to endanger his losing it. He
Speaker 1: had also a buzzing noise in his ear to relieve
Speaker 1: which he had some oil of sweet almonds put into it,
Speaker 1: And in two days after he perceived in his left
Speaker 1: nostril and itching and stinging, as if something moved there,
Speaker 1: which he could not discharge, but by putting his finger
Speaker 1: into his nose, when behold, he pulled out a worm,
Speaker 1: which ran swiftly on the palm of his hand, though
Speaker 1: covered with a viscous matter and snuff of which this
Speaker 1: gentleman took plenty. This worm was put into a tobacco
Speaker 1: box with snuff in it, where it lived five or
Speaker 1: six days. All the patients complaints ceased after this worm
Speaker 1: came away. The only difference between this and the former
Speaker 1: is this this worm was six lines only long, and
Speaker 1: had but one hundred feet, but there was this singular
Speaker 1: in both cases. The former was thought to be expelled
Speaker 1: by the use of tobacco snuff, whereas this subsisted three
Speaker 1: years with a plentiful use of the same weed, and
Speaker 1: after its expulsion lived five or six days on the
Speaker 1: same all right, So the idea here is that the
Speaker 1: centipede lived for years in this guy's head because he
Speaker 1: kept putting snuff in there, and it was eating the snuff.
Speaker 1: It seems to be at least partially the implication. I
Speaker 1: don't know about eating the snuff. There seemed to be
Speaker 1: multiple reasons to doubt the story, especially if you're taking
Speaker 1: on that detail about the last one, like surviving by
Speaker 1: eating tobacco. Tobacco, of course, contains nicotine, which is a
Speaker 1: powerful poison. Like so many of the drugs that humans
Speaker 1: consume on purpose recreationally, nicotine is supposed to discourage animals
Speaker 1: from taking the from consuming the plan and this is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons nicotine can be used as a
Speaker 1: natural pesticide. However, I do want to take a really
Speaker 1: brief digression just to point out unfascinating creature I came
Speaker 1: across here that does survive on tobacco and nicotine, and
Speaker 1: that is the man Duca Sexta Robert do you know
Speaker 1: about this one. I no, I wasn't familiar with the
Speaker 1: man Duca sexta. Oh, this is great. So this is
Speaker 1: a moth of this finger day family and in its
Speaker 1: larval stage, so meaning as a caterpillar. This species is
Speaker 1: sometimes known as the tobacco hornworm. So the tobacco hornworm
Speaker 1: eats the leaves of the tobacco plant. And the horn
Speaker 1: hornworm has a special gene called c yp six B
Speaker 1: forty six that allows it to metabolize nicotine. And now
Speaker 1: there's a twist. It doesn't just metabolize the nicotine. It
Speaker 1: uses this tobacco in its diet to produce a chemical
Speaker 1: defense sometimes referred to in the literature as toxic halitosis.
Speaker 1: It's killer tobacco breath. And so when the hornworm is
Speaker 1: threatened by a predator like a wolf spider, it can
Speaker 1: defend itself by releasing nicotine through pores in its skin,
Speaker 1: which drives away the predator. And this has been confirmed
Speaker 1: by research that found that hornworm is fed on low
Speaker 1: nicotine food were more susceptible to being attacked by wolf spiders.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I do not think that
Speaker 1: a tobacco hornworm was in this guy's sinus, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a big difference between this this larva that is
Speaker 1: uh you know, clearly it has evolved to feed on
Speaker 1: the leaves of this plant versus the predator that is
Speaker 1: the centipede. Okay, so we got doubts about all these reports.
Speaker 1: But that that's three centipede in the nose reports. Now
Speaker 1: you know what. I found one more old centipede in
Speaker 1: the nose report. This one from the Journal of Laryngology
Speaker 1: and Ontology by W. P. May M E y j
Speaker 1: E S. I don't know how to pronounce that, but
Speaker 1: I think this is a report from Amsterdam. And this
Speaker 1: is from and this report goes a woman farm worker
Speaker 1: from the countryside appeared to the physician with the complaint
Speaker 1: of a headache over the right eye that had persisted
Speaker 1: for months, combined with a chronic running nose. The doctor
Speaker 1: did not immediately detect any major problems except for stuff
Speaker 1: swelling in the nasal cavity and conjunctivitis or you know,
Speaker 1: inflammation of the eyes. So to help less in the
Speaker 1: swelling go down, the doctor ordered menthol with boric acid
Speaker 1: for the woman to snuff up. Uh. Man, every time
Speaker 1: you read these You're just like, wow, these old treatments
Speaker 1: are boric acid. Um. But so she snuffed it up.
Speaker 1: A few days later, the woman returned. Uh. After she
Speaker 1: has snuffed up the menthol and the boric acid, she
Speaker 1: has a fit of sneezing and quote found in her
Speaker 1: handkerchief a small insects still alive. She had put it
Speaker 1: in some brandy and took it to me. The insect,
Speaker 1: which was about seven millimeters long, turned to be a centipede. Uh. Centipede,
Speaker 1: of course, is not an insect, but uh. This report
Speaker 1: says after the centipede was sneezed out, all the woman's
Speaker 1: symptoms went away. So it's difficult to tell how much
Speaker 1: stock we should put into these stories about centipedes in
Speaker 1: the human body, apparently like reported by physicians to real
Speaker 1: medical journals and publications, uh and on. Fortunately, as we
Speaker 1: will explore in the rest of this episode, it is
Speaker 1: not in principle impossible for insects, centipedes, and other small
Speaker 1: creatures to get inside a person's cranial cavities. That does happen,
Speaker 1: and we'll discuss more later. At the same time, these stories,
Speaker 1: at least some of them, seem kind of suspicious for
Speaker 1: the quality of how long the centipede was supposedly alive
Speaker 1: inside the human Maybe not impossible, but it's definitely questionable.
Speaker 1: They also to me, at least, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've got the same feeling, Robert. They call to mind
Speaker 1: the story of Mary Toft, the eighteenth century englishwoman and
Speaker 1: first class hoax artists who had doctors and surgeons convinced
Speaker 1: that she was repeatedly giving birth to rabbits. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: I remember this story, and apparently she really damaged some
Speaker 1: medical reputations because she had some some guys on on
Speaker 1: the line saying like, oh, yeah, I saw it. This
Speaker 1: lady gave birth to like rabbit parts and like part
Speaker 1: of an eel and parts of a cat, which if
Speaker 1: nothing else shows you like, here's an example, like somebody's
Speaker 1: willing to go through the grossness of of producing um
Speaker 1: to say, part of a rabbit from their body as
Speaker 1: a hoax. So putting a centipede up your nose, really
Speaker 1: it's a lighter sentence. Or I mean, in some cases,
Speaker 1: all you'd have to do is show up with the
Speaker 1: centipede in a handkerchief in a bottle of brand yeah,
Speaker 1: and say this came out of my nose. Now, why
Speaker 1: people would really be compelled to do that, I don't know.
Speaker 1: But then again, people have all kinds of crazy reasons
Speaker 1: for doing stuff. I mean, people just like to make
Speaker 1: up weird stories sometimes, Yeah, could just be for for
Speaker 1: the sheer attention of the thing. Yeah. Uh. Then again,
Speaker 1: I don't want to totally discount the full nature of
Speaker 1: these stories, because there are also modern reports of centipedes
Speaker 1: and body cavities. Some tend to be reported with like
Speaker 1: an air of sensationalism that kind of prejudices me against
Speaker 1: just accepting them. For example, in k A t V,
Speaker 1: a local news station in Arkansas reported the fourteen year
Speaker 1: old boy and Selene County woke up with terrible pain
Speaker 1: in one of his ears. He reached into his ear
Speaker 1: pulled out a four inch long centipede. Uh. The family
Speaker 1: reportedly put the centipede in a plastic bag and took
Speaker 1: the boy to the emergency room. He was okay. Uh.
Speaker 1: In the hospital reported they never encountered a centipede in
Speaker 1: an ear before. I guess nothing about that story is
Speaker 1: really implausible, except that it always gets picked up by
Speaker 1: like the daily mail, And that's how you see it um,
Speaker 1: and so that sort of prejudices me against it. But
Speaker 1: for the record, I tried to find recently documented cases
Speaker 1: of centipedes in the nasal cavity and couldn't find anything,
Speaker 1: though I did find reports of centipedes in the human ear.
Speaker 1: So it seems like if centipedes do get up in
Speaker 1: the sinuses, up in the nose, that's it's much more
Speaker 1: rare for that to happen than for other cranial invasions,
Speaker 1: such as say, cockroaches in the ear, which we'll get
Speaker 1: too later. All right, on that note, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break, but we'll be right back. Thank Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So we've discussed centipedes crawling around in one's
Speaker 1: head allegedly. Uh where what parts of the human bodies
Speaker 1: are we going to next? Ye? Well, I think we should.
Speaker 1: We should take a foray into the oral cavity. So
Speaker 1: let's establish some basic facts here. Uh. First of all,
Speaker 1: the question can bugs get inside your body cavities? The
Speaker 1: answer is yes, that that can happen. It does sometimes happen, right,
Speaker 1: and anything, we need more bugs in our mouths because
Speaker 1: we should be eating more bugs. Oh, that's a totally
Speaker 1: different question. Yeah, I mean we're I think we're on
Speaker 1: the record being pro intomate Feji here, but not talking
Speaker 1: about the mouth cavity so much because that's less of
Speaker 1: a worry, right, And unless the bug is poisonous, if
Speaker 1: you swallow it, you know it's just protein. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be digested. The problem would really be if
Speaker 1: it's in a cavity that is not meant to accept
Speaker 1: incoming solid matter. So this is where we're getting into
Speaker 1: the ear, Yes, exactly. And so it's time to talk
Speaker 1: about cockroaches because cockroaches are apparently one of the most
Speaker 1: common animals to end up in human orifices in real
Speaker 1: documented cases. I was reading a National Geographic article about
Speaker 1: this by Erica Ingleholped and she sites an interview with
Speaker 1: a North Carolina State University entomologists named Kobe shawl a
Speaker 1: few of Shaw's quotes and insights. Of course, first of all,
Speaker 1: it's not uncommon for a cockroach to show up in
Speaker 1: the human ear. That just does happen. People show up
Speaker 1: at hospitals all the time with a cockroach lodged in
Speaker 1: their ear. Apparently the no is as much more unusual this.
Speaker 1: This is like a less common thing to find, but
Speaker 1: also not totally unknown why cockroaches. Well Shall says, cockroaches
Speaker 1: are constantly searching for food, and actually ear wax might
Speaker 1: be an attractive source of nutrition to them. Ear wax
Speaker 1: tends to contain microbiota that emit a particular kind of
Speaker 1: volatile compound, volatile fatty acids, and these airborne compounds are
Speaker 1: similar to what might be present in meat. So your
Speaker 1: ear wax might smell like meat to a hungry cockroach
Speaker 1: crawling into those meat caves. It's like that that meat
Speaker 1: wax straight to the butcher's shop gets you some some
Speaker 1: gabba google in the ear. You're agool anyway. Shall suggests
Speaker 1: it's possible that secretions from the nasal passage might also
Speaker 1: be appealing as a kind of food to cockroaches, and
Speaker 1: don't know for sure, but as possible. But it's also
Speaker 1: worth emphasizing that cockroaches are not parasites. They're not like cookworms,
Speaker 1: they're not like the human bot fly. It is not
Speaker 1: in their interest to get stuck inside a human body cavity, right.
Speaker 1: That is, it's an extreme environment best left to the specialists. Right, So,
Speaker 1: when a when a cockroach ends up in a human
Speaker 1: ear or even in a nose. It is generally all
Speaker 1: just a big misunderstanding. They didn't mean they didn't really
Speaker 1: want to get stuck in there. They don't want to
Speaker 1: be inside you. They'd rather be somewhere else. But it
Speaker 1: just happened they were hungry. Now that that being said,
Speaker 1: one can well imagine that this could be a path,
Speaker 1: a long path to parasitism in an organism um, such
Speaker 1: as to say, the the theories regarding of the emergence
Speaker 1: of vampire bats that they may have once feasted on um,
Speaker 1: you know, in the larva that might be present at
Speaker 1: a at a wound site on some sort of megafauna,
Speaker 1: and then over time that develops into a more strategic
Speaker 1: consumption of blood directly from the you know, the large herbivore,
Speaker 1: as opposed to drinking the blood eating the body of
Speaker 1: the parasites that prey upon the larger before. So an
Speaker 1: evolutionary path over like millions of years, not over like
Speaker 1: a night or a year. Nowhere we're going to get tomorrow,
Speaker 1: and nowhere that we have arrived yet. Oh, that is
Speaker 1: an interesting evolutionary path of the path from say like
Speaker 1: a cleaning mutualism to parasitism, but it would have to
Speaker 1: be a situation like the thing about it is. For
Speaker 1: the cockroach, especially in a human habitat, there's plenty to eat.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of other things to eat, like the
Speaker 1: that the ear wax. If it were, you know, a
Speaker 1: great source of of a sustenance, it's probably not the
Speaker 1: best source of sustenance for the creature. Well even so,
Speaker 1: it probably might just smell like sustenance. Uh So, almost
Speaker 1: all incursions of roach kind into human orifices happen while
Speaker 1: the human is asleep. That almost never happened while the
Speaker 1: persons awake, and they also almost always feature small specimens
Speaker 1: of the creature involved. You don't tend to get a
Speaker 1: giant cockroach in your ear. You get a little juvenile cockroach,
Speaker 1: one of those movie or zooch cockroaches. Movie ors, what
Speaker 1: do you what do you mean? Because you're watching a
Speaker 1: movie or you go to the zoo, you're probably gonna
Speaker 1: encounter one of those giant, kising cockroaches. And then likewise,
Speaker 1: if it's a film about cockroaches, sometimes they'll throw one
Speaker 1: of those in just because some people keep them as
Speaker 1: pets in there more they're just grossery looking there's a
Speaker 1: zero percent chance you'll get a giant, hissing cockroach in
Speaker 1: your ear. If you get one, it will be a
Speaker 1: little one, you know, not as big a deal. Um.
Speaker 1: But also wild bugs can get inside the human body sometimes.
Speaker 1: Most of the reports and images of this you see
Speaker 1: on the internet are fake. We want to phasize this
Speaker 1: all that. You know, you'll see this on social media.
Speaker 1: You'll see reports in the tabloids, spiders crawling under people's skin,
Speaker 1: burrowing into wounds and all that. It's pretty much all fake.
Speaker 1: In like, cockroaches really do get into ears, but almost
Speaker 1: every image you see on the internet is not real. Likewise,
Speaker 1: a lot of the reports you read on the internet,
Speaker 1: especially from kind of viral sources, they're not real either.
Speaker 1: One common example is, and I don't know, Robert, have
Speaker 1: you ever come across the story of like ants getting
Speaker 1: in through the ear and eating the brain. I don't
Speaker 1: think I have, but that does sound like the kind
Speaker 1: of thing you might read and forward from Grandma or something. Exactly.
Speaker 1: They get through the gain in the ear and eat
Speaker 1: the brain if you like, eat sweets before going to bed,
Speaker 1: or they crawl in one ear and crawl out the
Speaker 1: other ear. These things do not happen. There are no
Speaker 1: records in the medical literature of anything like this happening,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't make sense on its face. Insects do
Speaker 1: sometimes go in the ear, but they don't eat the brain.
Speaker 1: They don't infest the deeper cranium. That just doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: But it's easy to see why stories like this, the
Speaker 1: untrue stories, especially about like spiders crawling under the skin,
Speaker 1: or ants getting in through the ear and eating the
Speaker 1: brain and all that kind of thing, why they are
Speaker 1: very popular and clicky and share able, and why they
Speaker 1: take hold of the public consciousness, why they become entomological folklore,
Speaker 1: because I think they ping a very sensitive spot in
Speaker 1: our in our you know, neurology, that like, there's a
Speaker 1: certain part of human nature that seems very finely tuned
Speaker 1: for recognizing parasitism and creepy Crawley's and anything that might
Speaker 1: be getting on you, because there are real parasites out there.
Speaker 1: Uh So we're sort of hyper primed, I think, to
Speaker 1: make monsters within this category, right, and and and sometimes
Speaker 1: we overtly make monsters of them too. It's not count
Speaker 1: out the role that horror plays in all of this,
Speaker 1: Like In thinking of this, how many of you thought
Speaker 1: back to Stephen King's Creep Show and the scene where
Speaker 1: all the cockroaches burst out of e. G. Marshall. That's
Speaker 1: a great one, Yeah, and in a whole bit that's
Speaker 1: about like fear of creepy crawleys and cockroaches, you know.
Speaker 1: And we have all these stories too, have like vampires
Speaker 1: dying and bursting into you know, a wave of centipedes
Speaker 1: and uh bugs. Well, e G. Marshall, I think he
Speaker 1: plays like a Howard Hughes type character, right, He's got
Speaker 1: he's like a rich guy who keeps himself secluded because
Speaker 1: he's afraid of like bugs and germs and everything. Right.
Speaker 1: And there's also I think with this innate, this innate
Speaker 1: fear of our body being habitat for something, and our body,
Speaker 1: our bodies are habitats. We learn more about that essential
Speaker 1: nature of our being every day. Uh. But it's part
Speaker 1: of the horrors of the grave, and the idea that
Speaker 1: we would they would things would be living within us
Speaker 1: while we were alive is grotesque, yeah, exactly. But I
Speaker 1: mean your body needs to be a habitat for your microbiome.
Speaker 1: You don't want it to be a habitat for other
Speaker 1: larger creatures. And so, while it is not impossible for
Speaker 1: bugs to get inside human body cavities like, there are
Speaker 1: cases where it definitely happens. Oh yes, we will discus
Speaker 1: us more before this episode is over. Many, and I'd
Speaker 1: say probably the vast majority of cases in which someone
Speaker 1: is convinced they have bugs inside their body are cases
Speaker 1: of what's known as delusional infestation, also known as delusional
Speaker 1: parasitosis or sometimes as eck Bombs syndrome. Yeah, name for
Speaker 1: Swedish neurologist Carl Axel Eckbomb, who published siminar accounts of
Speaker 1: the disease in and basically the idea here is that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, one comes to believe that parasites are infesting
Speaker 1: your home, your surroundings, your clothing, and ultimately your body. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, these reports are not isolated to real actual
Speaker 1: parasites like hookworms and you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: It it also includes delusional ideas about insects and other
Speaker 1: creatures that are not actually parasites. Right, and and very
Speaker 1: often the way it ends up going is is someone
Speaker 1: feels that they are infested by something, you know, they
Speaker 1: feel that they have uh parasites inside their body and
Speaker 1: their bowels, under their skin, there's some sort of an
Speaker 1: itching sensation, et cetera. And then they go to the
Speaker 1: doctor and the doctor looks at them and says, no,
Speaker 1: there's nothing, there's nothing there, but they know they feel
Speaker 1: that they believe it, and they begin going down this
Speaker 1: road of trying to figure out what's wrong. Um. But
Speaker 1: of course, ultimately it is not a problem. It's not
Speaker 1: a dermatological problem, it's not a it's not a medical
Speaker 1: biological problem. It is a psychological problem. It is a delusion.
Speaker 1: So you see this sometimes in the cases of stimulant abuse,
Speaker 1: especially methamphetamine abuse, can result in delusional parasites. Uh. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you've seen these referred to as cocaine bugs, or you
Speaker 1: know the ideas of tweakers who pick at their skin
Speaker 1: in search of the bugs that they feel in their skin. UM.
Speaker 1: The Bohart Museum of Entomology points out that high fevers
Speaker 1: and severe alcohol withdrawal can also produce these symptoms, along
Speaker 1: with visual hallucinations of the bugs and question. UM. I
Speaker 1: should also point out there's a there's a wonderful I
Speaker 1: don't know if wonderful as the word for it. There's
Speaker 1: a very uh. There there's a there's a there's a play, powerful,
Speaker 1: powerful play by Tracy Letts that I actually got to
Speaker 1: see performed locally here in Atlanta, is really really, really
Speaker 1: good called Bug uh. And it was later made into
Speaker 1: a two thousand and six film by William Friedkin, starring
Speaker 1: Ashley Judd, Michael Shannon, and Harry Connick Jr. Harry Connick Jr. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know who he. I haven't seen the film version, um,
Speaker 1: but I know that the two main characters are Judd
Speaker 1: and Shannon in the film. Um. But but it's quite good.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of skin in it, a lot of
Speaker 1: bug delusions. Uh. And it begins with conspiracy theories about
Speaker 1: the infestation of the room or the apartment that they're
Speaker 1: staying in, and then they end up having the shared
Speaker 1: delusion of their bodies being infested by some sort of
Speaker 1: a parasite. Anyway, that's the that's the fiction. But the
Speaker 1: fiction that does line up reasonably well with some of
Speaker 1: the realities. The delusion can ultimately result in self mutilation
Speaker 1: is one attempts to remove the bugs, or as one
Speaker 1: excessively scratches at the skin. There's actually a wonderful article
Speaker 1: that came out about this couple of years ago from
Speaker 1: Eric Boudman, and he actually won a two thousand eighteen
Speaker 1: Science and Society Journalism Award for his article Accidental therapists
Speaker 1: for insect detectives. The trickiest cases involved the bugs that
Speaker 1: aren't really there. Published in UH in s t a
Speaker 1: t Uh, he describes an individual suffering from this delusion
Speaker 1: who consulted an exterminator. Uh. Then they consulted their doctor,
Speaker 1: and then they went to a dermatologist. And each time
Speaker 1: they weren't getting the answers that they wanted and then
Speaker 1: they needed they were they each time they were told,
Speaker 1: you know, there are no bugs in your house, there
Speaker 1: are no bugs in your skin. Uh Like. Ultimately they
Speaker 1: took to uh filling a bathtub up with insecticide and
Speaker 1: climbing into it. And but even that they didn't solve it.
Speaker 1: They got out and they still felt the presence of
Speaker 1: the bugs. And that's where, as A. Boudman explains in
Speaker 1: his article, that's where Dr Gail Ridge entered the scenario.
Speaker 1: A public entomologists, meaning people come to her with specimens
Speaker 1: and questions to the tune of like twenty three people
Speaker 1: a day and she works at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.
Speaker 1: So this individual came to her and she tried to explain, no, look,
Speaker 1: this is how insects actually interact with your skin. This
Speaker 1: is how you know actual parasites work. Um. And she
Speaker 1: ended up seeing the individual a handful of times before
Speaker 1: she learned that they died. Um. So in this case.
Speaker 1: In others, uh Dr Ridge here often has to weigh
Speaker 1: in on cases that are far more psychological than entomological.
Speaker 1: That makes sense, now. Budman's paper is is a great read.
Speaker 1: I'll try to include a link to it on the
Speaker 1: landing page for this episode at at the website stuff
Speaker 1: to Bling your Mind dot com. But it makes a
Speaker 1: number of very interesting points. First of all, these patients
Speaker 1: are really suffering, even though doctors tend tend to in
Speaker 1: many cases dismissed them and send them away. Right, Like
Speaker 1: if you show up at a doctor's office and you
Speaker 1: say I've got bugs inside my body and then the
Speaker 1: doctor just checks and says, no, there are no bugs
Speaker 1: in there. That that shouldn't be case closed, right, That
Speaker 1: should be like there should be a sign that something
Speaker 1: is wrong that you do need help in a way
Speaker 1: even if there aren't physically insects. But it's it's a
Speaker 1: difficult scenario because the best treatment for their suffering is
Speaker 1: usually an antipsychotic. But there, there, you there. But generally
Speaker 1: the problem that the struggle is getting them to accept
Speaker 1: that their problem is psychological and that they need to
Speaker 1: see a mental health professional because they're coming in here
Speaker 1: they believe that only a powerful anti parasitic is going
Speaker 1: to do the trick. Uh and or that an insect
Speaker 1: specialist is required. Quote Ridge sees as many as two
Speaker 1: hundred of these cases a year. She isn't the only
Speaker 1: one with this unintentional expertise. A whole network of entomologists,
Speaker 1: a universities, research stations and even at natural history museums
Speaker 1: is all too familiar with these requests. So they come in,
Speaker 1: they bring scabs, samples of skin. Is proof. One of
Speaker 1: the individuals that Budeman talks to is Nancy Hinkel from
Speaker 1: the University of Georgia at Athens, so close by here
Speaker 1: and uh. Hinkel says that inquiries like this take up
Speaker 1: twenty percent of her time and that every state has
Speaker 1: quote somebody like Gael or meat like there's somebody in
Speaker 1: there that that this is becoming increasingly their work. In
Speaker 1: other words, cases of delusional parasitosis are rare in the
Speaker 1: medical field, but far more common in the intomol entomological world.
Speaker 1: Extreme cases may end in severe alteration to one's life,
Speaker 1: even suicide or death. Um. Here's one more quote from
Speaker 1: the article. Quote. Even when an entomologist notices the tailtell
Speaker 1: signs of DP, there is little that can be done
Speaker 1: over the phone. Biologists estimate that there are some six
Speaker 1: point eight million anthropod species on Earth. Even the most
Speaker 1: fanciful description could at its root be a real insect.
Speaker 1: Well that's sort of like what we're running into with, uh,
Speaker 1: with the cases of the centipedes up earlier, Like we
Speaker 1: didn't we're not there to see it, so we don't
Speaker 1: really know for sure. We're just reading these accounts, and
Speaker 1: so we're stuck with saying like, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't think this likely happened, but we can't be sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't roll it outright. So part part
Speaker 1: of the problem identified in this article is that what's
Speaker 1: needed here are psycho dermatology outposts in the medical world
Speaker 1: where where the connection between the science of the mind
Speaker 1: and signs of the skin is more established, so there's
Speaker 1: greater ease and finesse moving patients toward proper psychological treatments.
Speaker 1: And there apparently are a few places in the United
Speaker 1: States and some in the Netherlands that have begun to
Speaker 1: do this. Uh. One of the accounts that the author
Speaker 1: includes here mentions a doctor in Amsterdam that that deals
Speaker 1: with patients and they've they've sort of figured out how to,
Speaker 1: you know, first form a relationship of trust with the
Speaker 1: patient and then at the appropriate time, you know, let
Speaker 1: them know like this is something you need to see
Speaker 1: a psychiatrist about, and and sometimes sweetening the deal by
Speaker 1: pointing out pointing to a two thousand fourteen paper about
Speaker 1: how some drugs that treat delusional disorders also happened to
Speaker 1: kill kill parasites. So I think that's interesting, you know,
Speaker 1: pointing figuring out that, like, like they're they're more of
Speaker 1: these cases occurring than one might think. And if we
Speaker 1: just if medical professionals, entomologists, uh, etcetera. Are are better
Speaker 1: positioned to move them towards encourage them to go seek
Speaker 1: appropriate help, Uh, everyone's going to be better off. Yeah, absolutely, though,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is such a hard problem and it's
Speaker 1: also part of a broader problem which is present in
Speaker 1: the medical and mental health communities where it's um, it
Speaker 1: just tends to be a fact that people who are
Speaker 1: experiencing delusions and psychosis another you know, most of the
Speaker 1: conditions that cause them to experience delusions and psychosis also
Speaker 1: tend to entail ideation patterns that made people resistant to
Speaker 1: correct die gnosis. So like if you tell a person that, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, what you think you're experiencing is not physically
Speaker 1: the case, and you know, like anti psychotic medication could
Speaker 1: help you, Uh, it just tends very often to be
Speaker 1: the case that people don't respond well to being told that,
Speaker 1: and that they say, no, that's not right, right, And
Speaker 1: then oftentimes there's a stigma against a seeking professional help
Speaker 1: for for mental problems or having any kind of mental
Speaker 1: disorder or delusion. And then again back to just the
Speaker 1: nature of insects and infesting our homes, like how hard
Speaker 1: are are fleas to see? How hard a chiggers to see? Um,
Speaker 1: you know, without getting into just the whole list of
Speaker 1: various parasitic organisms that are basically invisible to us. So again,
Speaker 1: it doesn't I mean, if you're one is presented with
Speaker 1: the option like, well, either other people just can't see
Speaker 1: this creature because it's small, or other people can't see
Speaker 1: this creature because it is a delusion of your mind.
Speaker 1: You can see why people are more inclined to believe
Speaker 1: that it's is something that they just haven't found the
Speaker 1: right entomologists, they haven't found the right dermatologists to identify
Speaker 1: the problem. Yeah. Well, I guess we'd certainly hope that
Speaker 1: by like establishing procedures like this where you've got sort
Speaker 1: of a chain of people to talk to where you
Speaker 1: established trust with the patient, and by trying to remove
Speaker 1: stigma from seeking mental health help, uh, that maybe maybe
Speaker 1: this kind of thing could get better. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I would hope, so yeah, yeah, because according to what
Speaker 1: I've read, the antipsychotic medications do help the individuals. So like,
Speaker 1: you know, there there there is, there is a treatment.
Speaker 1: It's not one of these because there are certain mental
Speaker 1: conditions We've discussed various delusions where there is not really
Speaker 1: an exit, you know that where things are pretty dire.
Speaker 1: But this seems to be something that is in many
Speaker 1: cases very treatable. Again, if proper treatment has found and
Speaker 1: again I get the sense. I don't know if if
Speaker 1: this lines up with what you you're reading, but I
Speaker 1: get the sense that the vast majority of the people
Speaker 1: who show up and say I've got a bug in
Speaker 1: me do not actually have a bug in them, like
Speaker 1: the psychle logical cause of these symptoms. I mean, the
Speaker 1: symptoms are real in both cases, but psychological causes are
Speaker 1: far more prevalent than the entomological causes. All right, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take another break, give you a few minutes to
Speaker 1: listen to an advertisement and maybe feel your skin a
Speaker 1: little bit. Let's see see how you're feeling. But we'll
Speaker 1: be right back with more more tails of of of
Speaker 1: bugs in the skin and bugs of the mind. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. So, as we were just discussing, it's clear
Speaker 1: that the majority of cases where people think they've got
Speaker 1: like a bug inside a body cavity or under their
Speaker 1: skin or something. And if you think you've got bugs
Speaker 1: under your skin, you're pretty much always going to be wrong.
Speaker 1: If you think you have a bug in the body cavity,
Speaker 1: even then you're probably mistaken. There there's probably not a
Speaker 1: bug in there. But we can't say that's the case
Speaker 1: always because sometimes bugs do get in there. So I
Speaker 1: think it's time to talk about that a little more
Speaker 1: and about UH, and maybe get to talking about what
Speaker 1: to do if there actually is a bug in a
Speaker 1: body cavity. Um. So I came across the article from
Speaker 1: the Oxford University Press, Journal of the Entomological Society of America,
Speaker 1: and the piece is by the American biologist and entomologist
Speaker 1: and National Medal of Science Laureate may Baron Baum. Just
Speaker 1: a few interesting facts about baron Baum I found. Uh.
Speaker 1: In addition to being a renowned entomologist, I think she
Speaker 1: sounds very much like our kind of people. She created
Speaker 1: an event at the University of Illinois called the Insect
Speaker 1: Fear Film Festival, which, according to its website, is an
Speaker 1: opportunity to quote watch insect themed horror movies, handle live
Speaker 1: insects at our petting zoo, learn about insects you fear,
Speaker 1: and then get t shirt stickers, balloon insects, and your
Speaker 1: face painted. This sounds like my kind of event. I
Speaker 1: would love to go to that. This sounds great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll have to look out creature features and then touch
Speaker 1: in real insects. That sounds wonderful. It sounds like she's
Speaker 1: very comfortable um marrying, you know, sort of like the
Speaker 1: pop culture, the insect myths and all that, using that
Speaker 1: as a window to share re all knowledge about entomology
Speaker 1: and the role of insects in our lives with people.
Speaker 1: Let's look at the fear, let's look at the sensationalism,
Speaker 1: and then let's look at the reality. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: she seems very cool. She's also apparently had a character
Speaker 1: named after her in the classic X Files episode War
Speaker 1: of the Copper Phages, which is one of the best
Speaker 1: episodes in the entire series, quite relevant to today's topic
Speaker 1: because it discusses cockroaches ideas about cockroach infestation and delusional
Speaker 1: infestation or delusional parasitosis, which is a big big thing
Speaker 1: in the episode. The character named after her is apparently
Speaker 1: it's named and I did remember this character, uh named Bambi.
Speaker 1: Barrenbaum recalls she's sort of like a weird entomologist who
Speaker 1: Molder develops a crush on and Scully gets jealous of
Speaker 1: over the phone, and I recall she also has some
Speaker 1: theory that UFO sightings are actually caused by swarms of insects,
Speaker 1: but that's the X Files character, not the real Dr
Speaker 1: Baron Baum. So this article, by the way, if you
Speaker 1: can look it up, it's really pretty great, the one
Speaker 1: from nine. So she collects references from the medical literature,
Speaker 1: including an interesting study from nineteen eighty seven by Baker
Speaker 1: which found a hundred and thirty four cases of foreign
Speaker 1: objects found in children's ears. Of those undred and thirty
Speaker 1: four objects, twenty seven were insects, and of those twenty
Speaker 1: one were cockroaches. So that the others you ask, well,
Speaker 1: I actually looked up to study to find out what
Speaker 1: the others were. The other six of those twenty seven
Speaker 1: where one ant, one fly, three spiders, and one tick.
Speaker 1: Only one of those has any business being in there.
Speaker 1: The tick you can only blame so much because you
Speaker 1: know that's it's a tick. It's gross, it's it's there
Speaker 1: to suck skin. The ticks actually the worst one. I
Speaker 1: don't really bear a lot of ill will to cockroaches.
Speaker 1: I don't love having them in my house, but you know, ticks,
Speaker 1: I just you know, just newcomb. Yeah, I like we
Speaker 1: discussed in our our episode on ticks. Uh, certainly everyone
Speaker 1: should go back and listen to if you want to
Speaker 1: feel gross about the woods, Um, you know that they
Speaker 1: are out to get us. They are out to get us.
Speaker 1: Most of these other cases there are just mistakes. But
Speaker 1: the tick wants you, and it's seeking you, and if
Speaker 1: you venture into its abode, it will find you. So
Speaker 1: baryon Bomb mentions that a common method for removing cockroaches
Speaker 1: from the ear is to drown a cockroach in liquid
Speaker 1: of some kind before removal. It is much like my
Speaker 1: dad did with the bug that flew into my ear.
Speaker 1: I think that was that was a good good thing
Speaker 1: to do. And now ideally I'm not gonna say people
Speaker 1: should usually try to deal with bugs and body cavities
Speaker 1: on their own, because there are cases where having like
Speaker 1: a medical opinion is important, but that does seem to
Speaker 1: be a pretty pretty reliable way to deal with it.
Speaker 1: Drowning liquids throughout a medical history of included Ben's a cane,
Speaker 1: sucinal coline, is superbole, alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, ether, water, vegetable oil,
Speaker 1: mineral oil. Want to be clear, I'm not recommending all
Speaker 1: of those, especially since things like ether are flammable. A
Speaker 1: more recent technique that's been used in clinics, pioneered nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty is the use of lydocaine spray. This is usually
Speaker 1: used as a topical anesthetic, right, you know they sprayed
Speaker 1: on you to numb the skin. But when applied to
Speaker 1: a quote inter intro, sorry not inter intra aural cockroach, uh,
Speaker 1: it tends to paralyze the insects so the insect can
Speaker 1: be safely removed, or even better, the initial application of
Speaker 1: light acaine solution spray sometimes causes the problem to resolve itself,
Speaker 1: as in the case of one intervention by O'Toole at
Speaker 1: all published in nineteen five, in which after the light
Speaker 1: decaine application quote, the roach exited the canal at a
Speaker 1: convulsive rate of speed and attempted to escape across the floor,
Speaker 1: presumably with a road runner esque sound effect. Me be uh.
Speaker 1: And then Baron Boum notes that quote the simple crush
Speaker 1: method was quote ultimately responsible for the demise of the
Speaker 1: cock row. But now I got a dead cockroach in
Speaker 1: my ear. No, it wasn't in the ear, it was
Speaker 1: on the floor. Okay, that's that's that's fine. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I want to be very clear. Don't try to step
Speaker 1: on a cockroach and somebody's ear. That is not That
Speaker 1: doesn't work at all. Uh. That method was then improved
Speaker 1: upon in nineteen eighty nine, with the addition of a
Speaker 1: metal suction tip to vacuum the cockroach out. Reportedly, after
Speaker 1: one case the Lyda Kaine spray was was applied and
Speaker 1: then the patient suddenly exhorted the doctor to quote, get
Speaker 1: that sucker out of my ear. So they used the
Speaker 1: vacuum to get it out. Um. But then also she
Speaker 1: relays some reports about fly larva or maggots colonizing the
Speaker 1: orifices of humans, such as the nose or the euro
Speaker 1: genital tract, though she seems a little skeptical about the
Speaker 1: case report that uh that that was about the euro
Speaker 1: genital tract. One of the medical reports she discusses, relayed
Speaker 1: by Battia and Lund in the Journal of Laryngology and
Speaker 1: Otology in nineteen concerns this thirty five year old man
Speaker 1: in London who had an infestation of oestrus ovis a
Speaker 1: sheep nasal bot fly in his nose in the thirty
Speaker 1: five year old man's nose. Apparently this happens more commonly
Speaker 1: in shepherds and people who deal directly with sheep. That
Speaker 1: makes sense. It's a little perplexing how this guy in
Speaker 1: London got one. He claimed he had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with sheep, but who knows. According to the report, he
Speaker 1: had been quote sneezing out several maggots during the preceding
Speaker 1: six weeks before he called a doctor, and Baron Bomb
Speaker 1: points out that it's kind of odd that it took
Speaker 1: him that long to call a doctor after sneezing out maggots.
Speaker 1: I would also think if you, if you seem to
Speaker 1: be consistently sneezing out matt maggots, you do have a
Speaker 1: small window to really succeed on the sideshow circuit. You know,
Speaker 1: like like the second it starts happening, books some appearances
Speaker 1: and uh and and do it as fast as possible
Speaker 1: while the magic is still there. Come see the amazing
Speaker 1: maggot gig uh And perhaps the most troubling recent case
Speaker 1: and don't worry, it has a happy ending of a
Speaker 1: cockroach in a body cavity that I came across was
Speaker 1: this one. So on February one seen a doctor m
Speaker 1: in Shankar uh Stanley Medical College Hospital in Chennai, India
Speaker 1: removed a cockroach from a woman's skull and this one
Speaker 1: was in her sinus cavity. So here's a definite like
Speaker 1: this is this is this is earlier centipede territory. Right.
Speaker 1: We don't know if there were ever really centipedes in there,
Speaker 1: but definitely a cockroach can get in there. It was
Speaker 1: innercinus cavity in between her eyes, and it had apparently
Speaker 1: crept up her nose while she was asleep. And fortunately
Speaker 1: Dr Shankar was able to remove the insects successfully with
Speaker 1: an endoscopic procedure and the woman was fine. If you've
Speaker 1: got a strong stomach, there's a video of this you
Speaker 1: can watch on the internet. Uh, well, no, thank you,
Speaker 1: but but but secondly, it does make me think of
Speaker 1: the little woman who lived in the shoe. So if
Speaker 1: centipedes are not naturally occurring naturally crawling into people's sinus cavities,
Speaker 1: but of occasionally a cockroach may, then perhaps the centipede
Speaker 1: is just that at individual's initial attempt to deal with
Speaker 1: the problem, uh, that doesn't work, and then they have
Speaker 1: to go to the doctor and they don't you know,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's like if you try and you know,
Speaker 1: work on your own weight toenail or something, or do
Speaker 1: your own dynastry and then you go finally and seek
Speaker 1: professional help. You don't want to tell them. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I tried to do this stupid thing of my own first,
Speaker 1: and now I'm here with you. No, you just say,
Speaker 1: I guess there's a cockroach up there? Did you say
Speaker 1: the old lady who lived in a shoe? I think
Speaker 1: you meant who swallowed a fly? Yea, it might be
Speaker 1: the same one. She swallowed a centipede to catch the flush.
Speaker 1: She snorted a centipede to catch the cockroach that wriggled
Speaker 1: and jiggled and wiggled and side roach. Perhaps she'll die, yes,
Speaker 1: but she didn't. Well no, wait, I'm not saying this
Speaker 1: woman actually did that. But the woman in the case,
Speaker 1: very clear did not. I don't remember what happened to her.
Speaker 1: I think I don't know. Well, uh so I think
Speaker 1: we should end here with a discussion of what to
Speaker 1: do if you actually think there's a bug in one
Speaker 1: of your body cavities, if you think you've got a
Speaker 1: centipede or a cockroach up your nose or in your
Speaker 1: ear or whatever, what's your plan of action? So, first
Speaker 1: of all, we want to size again. Even if you
Speaker 1: feel very convinced, there is a very good chance you're mistaken,
Speaker 1: and that should be good news, right Like people feel
Speaker 1: creepy Crawley sensations for all kinds of reasons, and animals
Speaker 1: actually getting inside the body cavities. Though there are a
Speaker 1: lot of stories collected of it over the time, the
Speaker 1: chances of it happening to you are pretty rare, especially
Speaker 1: if you don't live in a tropical climate. Right now,
Speaker 1: I do want to stress everything we said earlier about
Speaker 1: delusional parasitosis. If you do, if you do have substance
Speaker 1: abuse issues, that could be part of the problem. But
Speaker 1: but you shouldn't be afraid to see a doctor over
Speaker 1: the symptoms if that's the case. But your symptoms could
Speaker 1: be quite unrelated to any kind of substance abuse issues.
Speaker 1: And in this case, it's it's really important to realize
Speaker 1: that it is treatable with antipsychotic medication, and cases like
Speaker 1: this are not as rare as you might think. Though obviously,
Speaker 1: again I can see where that could be a struggle
Speaker 1: to to realize, you know, okay, it's not a situation
Speaker 1: of of an insect crawling into my skin, r into
Speaker 1: my body. It's a it's a more elusive concept. It's
Speaker 1: there's something, there's an illusion in my mind that has
Speaker 1: to be addressed. If the causes are psychological, there is
Speaker 1: not shame in seeking treatment. Seeking treatment will help you.
Speaker 1: So that's what you should do, right, What should you
Speaker 1: not do? Oh? Okay, well, if you even if whatever
Speaker 1: the real causes, if you think something is in your ear, say,
Speaker 1: or in your nose, first piece of advice is do
Speaker 1: not try to kill or crush it, because if there
Speaker 1: actually is an insect in there, you're not seriously in
Speaker 1: danger of a bug inside your nose or your ear
Speaker 1: eating your brain. That's not gonna happen. You should seek
Speaker 1: medical attention as soon as possible, but it's not gonna, like,
Speaker 1: you know, eat the contents of your skull. What you're
Speaker 1: actually in greater danger of is bacterial infection in the cavity. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I mentioned earlier that article that interviews the entomologists
Speaker 1: Kobe shawl Shall points out that one of the worst
Speaker 1: ways you can put yourself at risk of infection with
Speaker 1: a roach in your orifice is to crush it because
Speaker 1: this could release it's mighty legions of gut bacteria into
Speaker 1: your own body, and that can lead to an infection.
Speaker 1: And there's a wonder, wonderful historic example of this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about the English explorer and
Speaker 1: British Indian Army officer John Hanning Speak, who was famous
Speaker 1: for exploring the Nile River to find what was believed
Speaker 1: to be its source in the eighteen fifties. And there's
Speaker 1: this story related and Speaks diaries that one night he's
Speaker 1: resting in his tent and the tent quote became covered
Speaker 1: with a host of small black beetles, evidently attracted by
Speaker 1: the glimmer of the candle. And then he went to
Speaker 1: sleep even though all these beetles are around, and he
Speaker 1: later woke up with one of the beatles crawling in
Speaker 1: his ear. Quote, He began, with exceeding vigor, like a
Speaker 1: rabbit in a hole, to dig violently away at my tympanum.
Speaker 1: The queer sensation this amusing measure excited in me is
Speaker 1: past description. What to do? I knew not so Speak
Speaker 1: tried to get it out by washing his ear canal
Speaker 1: with melted butter. This didn't work. Uh. Then he tried
Speaker 1: to dig it out with a knife, and this was
Speaker 1: a bad move. He only killed and presumably crushed or
Speaker 1: cut up the insect and wounded his own ear. And
Speaker 1: then the ear became infected quote for many months. The
Speaker 1: tumor made me almost deaf, and aid a hole between
Speaker 1: the ear and the nose, so that when I blew it,
Speaker 1: my ear whistled so audibly that those who heard it laughed.
Speaker 1: Six or seven months after this accident happened, bits of
Speaker 1: the beetle, a leg, a wing, or parts of the
Speaker 1: body came away in the wax. Uh. And I should
Speaker 1: just mention that I actually found the story related in
Speaker 1: that classic Snopes article about bugs eating through the ear
Speaker 1: into the brains. That's where I got the quotes from.
Speaker 1: But they're originally from I guess speaks diaries, as passed
Speaker 1: along in a book about Sir Sir Richard Francis Burton. Right. Uh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: This is just one of many amazing incidents from the
Speaker 1: travels of John Hanning speaking captain Sir Richard Francis Burton,
Speaker 1: with whom he sought the source of the nile and
Speaker 1: the bug incident here is actually to picked it in
Speaker 1: the film The Mountains of the Moon, which starred Patrick
Speaker 1: Bergen as as Richard Francis Burton and Ian Glenn. Most
Speaker 1: people know as uh Sir Mormont from a Game of
Speaker 1: Thrones jor the end All. Yeah, he played John Hanning Speak.
Speaker 1: It's uh, I haven't seen it and forever. I saw
Speaker 1: when I was a kid and and loved it. But
Speaker 1: it also stars Richard E. Grant, Fiona shap Peter Vaughan,
Speaker 1: Delroy Lindo, Bernard Bernard Hill, Omar sha Reef. So it
Speaker 1: had a great cast, and I remember being a quite
Speaker 1: an interesting film and a great introduction to two just
Speaker 1: fascinating characters from history. Yeah. Well, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: mention quickly that, uh, it's impossible to be sure, like
Speaker 1: we don't know what actually caused Speaks infection, but it
Speaker 1: seems very likely that simultaneously crushing the insect and cutting
Speaker 1: his own ear with the knife made the problem much
Speaker 1: worse than it would have been if he just let
Speaker 1: the beatle try to get out, and then that probably
Speaker 1: may have led to an infection. Yeah, after you brought
Speaker 1: this up, I popped out Edward Rice's biography of Burton,
Speaker 1: and he mentions that that Burton sometimes criticized Speak for
Speaker 1: a bit of like reckless ambition, especially in the African wilds.
Speaker 1: But then again the two clashed at times and had
Speaker 1: like a tremendous falling out and somewhat hated each other
Speaker 1: later on in life. But at any rate, one of
Speaker 1: one assumes that Burton was not tremendously easy to get
Speaker 1: along with either. Um. But at any rate, if you
Speaker 1: want to see of a cinematic depiction of this, this
Speaker 1: beetle in the ear incident, it is. It is in
Speaker 1: that movie The Mountains of the Moon, along with one
Speaker 1: of the other more harrowing encounters they had. Also is
Speaker 1: also depicted in which Somali spearmen tie up and stab
Speaker 1: speak numerous times with their spears, and then a throne
Speaker 1: spear skewers Burton through the cheeks through it so through
Speaker 1: one cheek and out the other. Yeah, yeah, you see.
Speaker 1: And you see all these like later portraits of Burton,
Speaker 1: and you can often see the scar on each each
Speaker 1: side of the face. Oh that's like a Garma del
Speaker 1: Toro movie injury. It's like what is Oh it's in
Speaker 1: Pan's Labyrinth where the guy gets cheek trauma. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: well this was. This is a classic case of cheek trauma,
Speaker 1: like cheek trauma, but also dental trauma because the spear
Speaker 1: damna like took out teeth and damage the jaw but
Speaker 1: he was able to. They both traveled back to England
Speaker 1: after the incident, and both had had lots of medical
Speaker 1: care attend to their wounds. Well yeah, so part I
Speaker 1: guess the moral of the story here is don't be
Speaker 1: like speak. If you actually do think you have a
Speaker 1: cockroach or an insect in your ear or whatever, don't
Speaker 1: crush it, don't kill it. Do your best to stay calm.
Speaker 1: Seek medical attention as soon as possible. A doctor can
Speaker 1: examine you and tell if something is actually in there
Speaker 1: or not, and if there is, they can try to
Speaker 1: remove the animal if it's actually there. If there's not
Speaker 1: something in there, you should seek medical attention to They
Speaker 1: can try to help figure it, figure out what's going on,
Speaker 1: and possibly prescribe medication to alleviate your symptoms. All right,
Speaker 1: So there you have it. Obviously, if you have any
Speaker 1: experience with any of these scenarios yourself, for or if
Speaker 1: you just have heard some folk tales of such things,
Speaker 1: or you have a favorite cinematic um uh intrabody bug
Speaker 1: threat you want to share, let us know you can
Speaker 1: reach us in in the normal ways. First of all,
Speaker 1: go to our our mothership Stuff to Blow your mind
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